K9 is asomewhat ridiculous but quite enjoyable program about a flying robotic dog fromthe future. Actually, the whole show takes place in the future, so the dog isfrom the future’s future. Also, it’s not really a dog. It’s a robot shaped likea dog, and it really hates being called a dog, and says so.

K9 arrives through a time/space machine that Professor Gryffen(Robert Moloney) has been working on. He can’t quite get it to function, butall sorts of creatures emerge from it anyway. Assisting him is a teenager namedDarius (Daniel Webber). They are soon joined by two teenage dissidents –Starkey (Keegan Joyce) and Jorjie (Philippa Coulthard). Professor Gryffen’s workon the machine has a personal as well as professional motivation – to bringback his family, who were lost in an accident. After Starkey saves the robotdog in the first episode, it acknowledges him as his young master. (By the way, John Leeson provides the voice for K9 - he provided the voice for K9 back in the 1970s and early 1980s on Doctor Who.)

In this future the government is referred to as TheDepartment, and it seems to have a lot of power, and little regard for the individual’srights. The Department has different sections, and Jorjie’s mother is the headof alien activities section. The increasingly insane Drake is the head ofanother section (actually, the only other section we ever see). The Departmentis eager to protect us from the aliens who seem to land here more and moreoften. The policy is simply to lock all aliens up, whether they’ve committed acrime or not. Robots have replaced the human police force. However, there is apositive aspect to that, as robot police are very slow, and seem to pose little threat. They seem incapable of quickly changing directions, preferring tomarch in a straight line.

This show, like most science fiction, deals with manyimportant themes, such as identity, family, how far government powers shouldextend in order to “protect” its citizenry, what constitutes a life form, peoplebeing replaced by machines, the ability to rise above one’s origins orprogramming, and so on. There are also environmental messages, like in theepisode “The Last Oak Tree,” when aliens steal a tree from the museum (in thefuture the forests are gone). By the way, that episode has K9 say, “I’m detecting abnormal levels of magneticinterference – oh, and Jorjie’s mother.” I love humor like that.

There is humor throughout the series, though someepisodes are certainly funnier than others. “The Cambridge Spy” is one of thefunnier ones, with lots of great humorous moments. In that episode, Jorjie isdoing an assignment of “the impact ofmusic culture on criminal activity in 1960s England.” Gryffen’s mansionused to be a police station, and Jorjie finds old documents in the basement. Then,of course, she is zapped by Gryffen’s machine, and disappears to 1963 (becauseyou can’t have a show with a time machine without someone going to thesixties).

It took a few episodes, but I have to admit, I gotcompletely involved in this show. By the fourth episode (“The Bounty Hunter”) Iwas totally on board. In that episode, K9’smemory displays video of Zanthus, the head of intergalactic peace commission,clearly about to be assassinated. Meanwhile a new alien comes through the timeportal, having followed K9. Gryffen offers him tea, but he’s a bounty hunterwho needs to bring K9 back to stand trial for murder of Zanthus.

Do you guys remember The Clapper? You turn your lights onand off by clapping. Well, according to the episode “Sirens Of Ceres,” in thefuture the clapper has evolved into the snapper. Snap on, snap off, the snapper.Things are going to be so much easier in the future. That’s actually a reallygood episode, in which Jorjie is sent to a creepy boarding school, part of thegovernment’s mind control experiments. Jorji puts on the bracelet, and anothergirl says, “There, now we’re all the same.”They all repeat, “All the same.” This theme is always effective for me. Anotherepisode about mind control is “The Custodians,” in which twenty millionchildren, including Jorjie and Darius, are being controlled by a virtual realitytoy.

This show makes a few interesting pop culture references,though never dwells on them. One episode is titled, “Fall Of The House OfGryffen,” obviously a reference to the Edgar Allan Poe story, “TheFall Of The House Of Usher.” This must have been the Halloween episode, forthere is a storm and Starkey reads a bit of “The Raven” (another of Poe’s works). There is also the ghostly appearance oftwo creepy children – entities pretending to be Gryffen’s missing children.“Curse Of Anubis” has a reference to InvasionOf The Body Snatchers. “Aeolian,” an episode about music and cyclones, hasa Wizard Of Oz reference (look atJorjie’s shoes when she’s trapped beneath a fallen bit of her roof).

But probably my favorite episode is “Mutant Copper,” inwhich the gang meets a robot cop who has human DNA implanted in him. So ofcourse they take him in. In return, he makes them all some toast. They name himBirdie. This is a totally delightful episode, mostly because of Birdie’s lines (“Ow, me noggin”), and because of hiscombination of identities (he still says, “What’sall this then?”).

Sadly, there is a clips episode. In “Mind Snap,” K9 goesa bit mad and calls itself a “dog.” So they go through its memories. Clips episodes are never good. But this one makes the samemistake that the Star Trek: The NextGeneration clips episode made – presenting as memories scenes that thecharacter wasn’t present for. That’s awful – and with a total of onlytwenty-six episodes, was a K9 clips episode really necessary?

There seems to be a continuity problem with the episode“The Last Precinct.” It was established in earlier episodes, such as Episode 4,that Professor Gryffen hasn’t been out of the house in ten years. But in thisepisode we’re informed that Sgt. Pike was arrested only two years ago fortrespassing; that is, for refusing to leave when this mansion ceased being apolice station, and robots took over his duties. Plus, Darius says he used tocome to this house with his dad, and that couldn’t have been ten years ago, because hewould have been like five years old, and probably wouldn’t remember it well.And it makes us wonder just when did Gryffen lose his family.

By the way, this series does wrap up well. It doesn’tleave you hanging. This four-disc set containsall twenty-six episodes of the series, as well as some bonus material.

Special Features

This DVD set has a couple of bonus features, both ofwhich are on the fourth disc. The first is TheMaking of K9, which features interviews with all of the regular castmembers, as well as some of the crew. Plus, there are shots of the K9 puppet, whichthe cast and crew call “Fluffy.” Perhaps most interesting to science fictionfans is the interview with Bob Baker, the writer of severalepisodes of Doctor Who. He talks about “The Invisible Enemy” (The character ofK9 was originally created for that Doctor Who episode). I wish there weremore with him. The feature is approximately twenty-four minutes.

The second bonus feature is Interview With K9, a short and silly bit in which a womaninterviews the robot. The robot’s voice is different, and they talk about that.They also joke about Doctor Who.Weirdly, a bit of this is dubbed. The woman conducting the interview says, “Who’s a good boy” – you see her lips say“boy” but you hear “dog.”

K9: The CompleteSeries is scheduled to be released on May 7, 2013 through Shout! Factory.

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K9 is a
somewhat ridiculous but quite enjoyable program about a flying robotic dog from
the future. Actually, the whole show takes place in the future, so the dog is
from the future’s future. Also, it’s not really a dog. It’s a robot shaped like
a dog, and it really hates being called a dog, and says so.
K9 arrives through a time/space machine that Professor Gryffen
(Robert Moloney) has been working on. He can’t quite get it to function, but
all sorts of creatures emerge from it anyway. Assisting him is a teenager named
Darius (Daniel Webber). They are soon joined by two teenage dissidents –
Starkey (Keegan Joyce) and Jorjie (Philippa Coulthard). Professor Gryffen’s work
on the machine has a personal as well as professional motivation – to bring
back his family, who were lost in an accident. After Starkey saves the robot
dog in the first episode, it acknowledges him as his young master. (By the way, John Leeson provides the voice for K9 - he provided the voice for K9 back in the 1970s and early 1980s on Doctor Who.)
In this future the government is referred to as The
Department, and it seems to have a lot of power, and little regard for the individual’s
rights. The Department has different sections, and Jorjie’s mother is the head
of alien activities section. The increasingly insane Drake is the head of
another section (actually, the only other section we ever see). The Department
is eager to protect us from the aliens who seem to land here more and more
often. The policy is simply to lock all aliens up, whether they’ve committed a
crime or not. Robots have replaced the human police force. However, there is a
positive aspect to that, as robot police are very slow, and seem to pose little threat. They seem incapable of quickly changing directions, preferring to
march in a straight line.
This show, like most science fiction, deals with many
important themes, such as identity, family, how far government powers should
extend in order to “protect” its citizenry, what constitutes a life form, people
being replaced by machines, the ability to rise above one’s origins or
programming, and so on. There are also environmental messages, like in the
episode “The Last Oak Tree,” when aliens steal a tree from the museum (in the
future the forests are gone). By the way, that episode has K9 say, “I’m detecting abnormal levels of magnetic
interference – oh, and Jorjie’s mother.” I love humor like that.
There is humor throughout the series, though some
episodes are certainly funnier than others. “The Cambridge Spy” is one of the
funnier ones, with lots of great humorous moments. In that episode, Jorjie is
doing an assignment of “the impact of
music culture on criminal activity in 1960s England.” Gryffen’s mansion
used to be a police station, and Jorjie finds old documents in the basement. Then,
of course, she is zapped by Gryffen’s machine, and disappears to 1963 (because
you can’t have a show with a time machine without someone going to the
sixties).
It took a few episodes, but I have to admit, I got
completely involved in this show. By the fourth episode (“The Bounty Hunter”) I
was totally on board. In that episode, K9’s
memory displays video of Zanthus, the head of intergalactic peace commission,
clearly about to be assassinated. Meanwhile a new alien comes through the time
portal, having followed K9. Gryffen offers him tea, but he’s a bounty hunter
who needs to bring K9 back to stand trial for murder of Zanthus.
Do you guys remember The Clapper? You turn your lights on
and off by clapping. Well, according to the episode “Sirens Of Ceres,” in the
future the clapper has evolved into the snapper. Snap on, snap off, the snapper.
Things are going to be so much easier in the future. That’s actually a really
good episode, in which Jorjie is sent to a creepy boarding school, part of the
government’s mind control experiments. Jorji puts on the bracelet, and another
girl says, “There, now we’re all the same.”
They all repeat, “All the same.” This theme is always effective for me. Another
episode about mind control is “The Custodians,” in which twenty million
children, including Jorjie and Darius, are being controlled by a virtual reality
toy.
This show makes a few interesting pop culture references,
though never dwells on them. One episode is titled, “Fall Of The House Of
Gryffen,” obviously a reference to the Edgar Allan Poe story, “The
Fall Of The House Of Usher.” This must have been the Halloween episode, for
there is a storm and Starkey reads a bit of “The Raven” (another of Poe’s works). There is also the ghostly appearance of
two creepy children – entities pretending to be Gryffen’s missing children.
“Curse Of Anubis” has a reference to Invasion
Of The Body Snatchers. “Aeolian,” an episode about music and cyclones, has
a Wizard Of Oz reference (look at
Jorjie’s shoes when she’s trapped beneath a fallen bit of her roof).
“Dream-Eaters” is a ridiculously enjoyable episode, in
which everyone is having nightmares and sleeping quite late. Jorjie’s mom gets
to wear a very silly alien costume. Science fiction fans will enjoy this episode's reference: K9 falls asleep and dreams of an electric sheep.
But probably my favorite episode is “Mutant Copper,” in
which the gang meets a robot cop who has human DNA implanted in him. So of
course they take him in. In return, he makes them all some toast. They name him
Birdie. This is a totally delightful episode, mostly because of Birdie’s lines (“Ow, me noggin”), and because of his
combination of identities (he still says, “What’s
all this then?”).
Sadly, there is a clips episode. In “Mind Snap,” K9 goes
a bit mad and calls itself a “dog.” So they go through its memories. Clips episodes are never good. But this one makes the same
mistake that the Star Trek: The Next
Generation clips episode made – presenting as memories scenes that the
character wasn’t present for. That’s awful – and with a total of only
twenty-six episodes, was a K9 clips episode really necessary?
There seems to be a continuity problem with the episode
“The Last Precinct.” It was established in earlier episodes, such as Episode 4,
that Professor Gryffen hasn’t been out of the house in ten years. But in this
episode we’re informed that Sgt. Pike was arrested only two years ago for
trespassing; that is, for refusing to leave when this mansion ceased being a
police station, and robots took over his duties. Plus, Darius says he used to
come to this house with his dad, and that couldn’t have been ten years ago, because he
would have been like five years old, and probably wouldn’t remember it well.
And it makes us wonder just when did Gryffen lose his family.
By the way, this series does wrap up well. It doesn’t
leave you hanging. This four-disc set contains
all twenty-six episodes of the series, as well as some bonus material.
Special Features
This DVD set has a couple of bonus features, both of
which are on the fourth disc. The first is The
Making of K9, which features interviews with all of the regular cast
members, as well as some of the crew. Plus, there are shots of the K9 puppet, which
the cast and crew call “Fluffy.” Perhaps most interesting to science fiction
fans is the interview with Bob Baker, the writer of several
episodes of Doctor Who. He talks about “The Invisible Enemy” (The character of
K9 was originally created for that Doctor Who episode). I wish there were
more with him. The feature is approximately twenty-four minutes.
The second bonus feature is Interview With K9, a short and silly bit in which a woman
interviews the robot. The robot’s voice is different, and they talk about that.
They also joke about Doctor Who.
Weirdly, a bit of this is dubbed. The woman conducting the interview says, “Who’s a good boy” – you see her lips say
“boy” but you hear “dog.”
K9: The Complete
Series is scheduled to be released on May 7, 2013 through Shout! Factory.

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